Germany's second largest supermarket chain, Rewe, told The European Correspondent its tofu sales have doubled over the past three or four years, and jumped another 30% in 2025.
The issue is not a lack of soybeans; it's that tofu makers are struggling to produce enough tofu, the supermarket confirmed. Producers are expanding their factories, but installing new machinery and production lines takes time.
Tofu is not a new product; it has deep-rooted historical origins in Asia. However, Europe took its time to acquire the taste.
Nowadays, Europe's demand for plant-based products is growing fast. In 2025, sales volumes for tofu, tempeh, and seitan grew by around 30% compared to the previous year in Germany, 27% in the Netherlands, and 24% in Italy.
Tofu and its healthy friends
How does one make tofu? The internet will tell you in much more detail, but it's similar to making cheese: you soak and blend soybeans into soy milk, heat the mix with a coagulant to form a curd, and press it into blocks. Voilà!
For anyone who still can't stand the taste of tofu, here's a game-changer tip from food scientist Wendy Luong: blanch your tofu in salted boiling water. It will taste better, and the texture will improve.
Soy provides high-quality, easily digested protein, with mostly unsaturated fats. Tofu retains much of that protein, although it contains much less fibre than whole soybeans. The growing obsession for protein-packed food is a likely key driver of its rising popularity.
But tofu comes from soybeans, which belong to the much larger legume family alongside peas, faba beans, lentils, chickpeas, and lupins. Whole legumes also bring fibre, folate, and plant iron.
Anne-Maria Pajari, professor of molecular nutrition and research group director at the University of Helsinki, conducted a six-week BeanMan trial to test what happens when red and processed meat is partially replaced with legumes. Of the 102 Finnish men involved, one half of the group cut their meat intake from around 760 to 200 grams a week, and replaced much of it with pea- and faba-bean foods.
After six weeks, their total “bad” LDL cholesterol levels were lower than those in the meat-heavy group, and they lost around a kilogram of weight on average. More fibre supports the gut and helps protect against colorectal cancer; replacing fatty meat also cuts saturated fat, keeping cholesterol down.
“We were trying to combine two good things: planetary health and people’s health,” Pajari told us. “We think legumes are a very good way to do it.”
That does not mean everyone should give up meat or live off tofu. Pajari argues for a wider mix of protein sources and less dependence on any one of them. “Nutrition is a science of moderation – no extremes,” she said.
Europeans still eat very few legumes. Pajari says Finns manage only around 10-20 grams a day (that's one or two spoonfuls), while the recommendation is closer to 100 grams.
It's similar across the EU: between 2017 and 2019, consumption of pulses (dry beans, lentils, chickpeas, and peas) was at just below 10 grams a day.
Legumes for a happier soil
Legumes are good for the soil, and soy is no exception. It forms a symbiosis with bacteria living in its roots that pull nitrogen from the air, so the plant needs little fertiliser and leaves the soil richer for whatever's planted next.
Nicolas Guilpart, associate professor of agronomy at Université Paris-Saclay AgroParisTech, says rotating soy into a field cuts the need for synthetic fertiliser later on.
“On top of that, soy needs four to six times less pesticides, since it is exposed to fewer diseases and predators,” he added.
But it isn't a completely effortless crop. “A major drawback, however, is its need for water,” noted Guilpart. “A large proportion of soy fields in Europe are indeed irrigated.”
Growing it well also requires specific expertise and value chains (transformation plants and infrastructure) that many farmers don’t yet have access to, which Guilpart calls the biggest obstacle to the development of soy in Europe.
Where does our soy come from?
Europe grows soy, but imports almost all soy protein it uses.
Soy currently covers just 1% of arable land in the EU. Between 2024 and 2025, EU farmers produced 3 million tonnes of soybeans, while the bloc imported 13.4 million tonnes of soybean and soy meal protein.
The European Commission estimates EU's soy import dependence at 94%, with supply coming mainly from Brazil, Argentina, and the US.
Most of the wider plant-protein system goes to livestock: about 70% of the protein from cereals, oilseeds, and pulses produced or consumed in the EU goes to feed.
In short, instead of directly consuming the soy we import, Europeans consume most soy indirectly, through meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. WWF estimates that in order to produce 100 grams of chicken breast, 96 grams of soy is fed to chickens. And for 100 grams of salmon, 95 grams of soy is used as feed.
Europe's dependence on soy imports also has an environmental cost outside our continent. Trase, a non-profit platform that tracks supply chains, estimates that Brazilian soy consumed in the EU accounted for around 13,600 hectares of deforestation a year between 2021 and 2023.
Should we grow it ourselves then?
Large parts of Europe are actually suited to grow soy, but “soy is underrepresented in Europe because of historical reasons: after World War II, the US specialised in soy whereas Europe produced cereals,” Guilpart explained.
In 2023, he co-authored a study showing that Europe could reach at least a 50% level of self-sufficiency in soy, even though climate change may shift the suitable cultivation area north- and eastwards.
While that potential remains largely untapped, legumes' increasing popularity is a promising sign. “As of today, legumes remain a niche culture, but they have a high potential,” explained Jean-Malo Couzigou, researcher from France's National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Plant Sciences Research Laboratory in Castanet Tolosan.
“Tofu and edamame already showed that when consumers get accustomed to the taste, the industry then follows,” he explained. Couzigou is now studying long-ignored legume varieties that could prove resilient and highly suited to our needs in a future climate.
What's stopping us?
Tofu is far from being mainstream everywhere in Europe. In Latvia, for example, the largest tofu producer is a one-man operation.
Mārtiņš Mičulis started OG Tofu during Covid-19, and sourced his beans from a local farmer. He says he's currently reached the ceiling of local demand – he has already reached most vegan and vegetarian restaurants in Rīga. While other restaurants would be open to local tofu, they don't quite seem to know what to do with it, said Mičulis.
Latvians eat plenty of meat and dairy, but legumes like grey peas and other kinds of beans have a special place in traditional cooking. Still, a 2014 study found that most adults ate pulses once a week or less.
So, how do we get more tofu on the table? Maybe Brussels can do something about it.
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) supports growing legumes such as peas, lupin, or field pea through eco-schemes. Yet this support remains only a small fraction of today's farm subsidies.
The climate crisis is also making legumes a riskier crop for farmers. Heat and drought during flowering can reduce yields, leaving farmers with less to sell.
Guilpart notes that heat as well as water scarcity are cutting legume yields, and subsidies don't cover the losses, so the numbers increasingly don't add up. Farmers respond to this by planting less: French pea acreage has collapsed from 700,000 to about 100,000 hectares over the past thirty years.
Back to the feed
On 7 July, the Commission published its Protein Action Plan, promising to reduce Europe's heavy reliance on imported plant protein. It recognises that farmers are more likely to take interest in growing beans if there are enough processing plants and storage facilities, along with reliable buyers.
But when we look at the numbers, the plan goes back to supporting animal feed. The plan's main goal is to raise the share of EU-grown oilseed and protein-crop protein used as feed from 25.8% to 35% by 2035. There is no equivalent target for food.
This is the European Vegetarian Union’s (EVU) objection. Rafael Pinto from EVU says Europe needs support for legumes grown and processed for food, steady demand through public food procurement, and campaigns encouraging people to eat them.
“Every year, public institutions across the EU spend around €45 billion on public food procurement. That's an estimated 54 million meals per day in schools, hospitals, universities and other public canteens,” Pinto said. Very few of these meals, however, contain legumes, he added.
Regular orders from schools, hospitals, and public canteens won't transform the system alone, but could give farmers and processors a dependable market that's currently missing. Meanwhile, the EU spends about €200 million a year for agri-food promotion, but has no comparable campaign for legumes.
“We haven’t seen the level of ambition necessary to follow through with the narrative of the Protein Plan,” Pinto said.
Europe may soon be able to grow more protein itself. Whether it puts much more of it directly on people’s plates remains to be seen.